updated 02:55 pm EDT, Fri March 25, 2011

Acer prices, dates Iconia tablets in the UK

At an event in the UK hosted by Acer and attended by RegHardware, the company announced prices for its upcoming 10.1-inch Iconia A500 and W500 tablets. The former will use Android, the latter Windows 7 as their OS. The W500 will be split into Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi with 3G models, and can be purchased on its own or with a docking keyboard.

With the dock, the device cannot close on a hinge like a traditional netbook. Instead, the hinge needs to be folded away and then the tablet clicked into place. It is held in place with a magnet and latch.

Instead of a trackpad, a rubber joystick-like button sticks out. Acer calls this the FineTrack. The keyboard has another USB port for wired networking.
The onboard chip is a 9W version of the 1GHz dual-core AMD Fusion C-50 with 1GB of RAM. It's paired with AMD's Radeon HD6250 GPU that gets 256MB of RAM.

The A500 gets Android 3.0 and doesn't get a docking keyboard. Instead, users can connect one using Bluetooth. It has a dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2, also rated at 1GHz.

They can output 1080p video, and share 1280x800 displays.

The W500 is said to provide four hours of battery life when watching video and six hours of web browsing. Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit is preloaded onto the 32GB solid state drive.

The two tablets arrive in the UK on April 8, with the Wi-Fi W500 and A500 priced at the same £449 ($722). The W500 keyboard will cost £90 ($145) on its own or bundled with the Wi-Fi tablet for £529 ($850) and the 3G version for £579 ($930). Pricing for the A500 Wi-Fi with 3G isn't yet available, but it will likely ship at the same time. US pricing is likely to be less than these equivalent amounts.